52 Watercolor artist | DECEMBER 2019
ichard Hanson isn’t afraid of
the dark. In fact, he’s quite
comfortable there. Hanson’s
series of watercolors set
after nightfall on the streets
of Italy plunges the viewer
into a darkness that’s inter-
rupted by the inviting glow
of nearby street lamps and
car lights, illuminated storefronts, and dazzling patterns of
refl ected light on cobblestone. “I like starkness,” Hanson
says, “and I like clarity.” It’s no surprise, then, that the artist
takes a meticulous approach to his art-making.Italian Inspiration
Hanson has been painting his nocturne street scenes for
only a few years. Before that, he spent most of his painting
time generating gritty portraits of city dwellers who per-
sonifi ed the eff ects of life on the street, thereby addressing
the plights of homelessness and violence. When the gallery
owner who requested most of those portraits died and the
gallery closed, Hanson decided to pursue a new creative
direction. “I had painted fi gures for a long time and did
very well with them, but I wanted to paint something forthe viewer that wasn’t quite so grim
and demanding,” Hanson says.
Enter Italy, the bel paese (“beauti-
ful country”). Th e quaint cobblestone
streets of Florence, in particular,
serve as the setting for Hanson’s
nighttime scenes; the Iowa artist
visits the Tuscan city annually with
his wife, who is of Italian descent.
Th e artist says of the Old World
environment: “I’m drawn to its tex-
tures—the cobblestones, the crusti-
ness, the age of the buildings.”
It takes Hanson up to 45 days to
complete each painting. He begins
with a detailed drawing made using
a mechanical pencil on cold-pressed
paper and based on reference photo-
graphs he has taken. Th e drawing alone
can take him two weeks to fi nish. “I do
a very fastidious drawing, working out
a balanced composition,” he says. “I
spend a good amount of time looking
at my photos so I can present some-
thing people don’t normally see.”Crimsonteen Chaos
(watercolor on
paper, 17¼ x25½ ) is all
about the red light
refl ecting off the wet
street. “This is the
initial focal point in
the composition,”
says Hanson. “The
white refl ected light
that parallels the
red creates a sense
of perspective.”